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Emanuel Reed was born in Shearsby and christened in the village church on 2 February 1823. He would have been just over two years old when things outside any control of his happened that haunted him during his life in England. At his trial in Leicester on 4 January 1842 for stealing rabbits his defence made much of the fact that he was the orphan child of parents both of whom came to an untimely end. In brief: “The father had been absent for some time, and on his return found his wife had formed an illicit connection with another man. One day she led him by the side of a canal, and whilst he was in the act of drawing his smockfrock over his shoulders, she took the opportunity to push him into the water; this causing his death, for which she was afterwards executed”.

Emanuel pleaded guilty of stealing two rabbits from Thomas Marvin, at Shearsby and one tame rabbit from Hannah Herbert. The jury was perhaps already familiar with the events that led up to the arrest of Hannah Read and her subsequent trial for the murder of her husband, as with some leniency they ordered that he receive one month’s imprisonment for his crimes.

He had first drawn attention to himself in 1839 after erecting a small hut for himself in a street in Shearsby. The village constable was unhappy with this and brought him before the justices at Harborough. At that time he was described as ‘a young urchin’ (Northampton Mercury, 21 September); ‘a poor boy, who appeared quite destitute’ (Leicester Journal, 20 September) and ‘an idle and dissolute lad’ (Leicestershire Mercury, 14 September). The magistrates heard of his orphan status, his sleeping all night in a self-built small cabin in the town street, his habit of wandering about looking for work where he could find it. They ordered that the constable take him back to Shearsby and find him work and only punish him if he refused to do it.

On the census night of April 1841 he was staying in John Goode’s farmhouse on Back Lane in Shearsby. The work found for him had been sweeping chimneys. In learning this trade he is likely to have come across Thomas Pegg, another chimney sweeper living in the village.

In September 1843 he was again in trouble with the law being charged under the Vagrant Act with being a rogue, but it was for rabbit stealing again, in Coventry on 3 January 1844 that he received a 7 year sentence of transportation. In Warwickshire his family circumstances would be less sympathetically recalled. He had to wait until the middle of the following year before leaving England.

On 14 June 1845 he set sail on the Marion 2 from Woolwich on the 94 day journey to Van Dieman’s Land (now Tasmania). He arrived in good health, according to the Marion’s Surgeon Jn. W. Elliott and was measured as 63.25 inches tall (1.6 metres). He said that he could read and write, was single and a protestant and had skills as a fellmonger. His family relationships included b [brothers] Uriah and Bennett, s [sisters] Ann and Mary, but ‘np’ [no parents].

He received a Conditional Pardon in November 1847 and a Free Certificate in February 1852. He married Bridget in Hobart and travelled to Victoria, to the Geelong area. Bridget died in 1874 (probably childbirth related) and Emanuel married Adele Fresse in 1877. He remained in the Geelong area and owned his own farm eventually at Gnawarre.

In 1879 he was called upon to help one of his neighbours whose wife had attempted to commit suicide, and despite Emanuel’s efforts to save her, she eventually died of her wounds.

Emanuel Read died aged 85 in Geelong Hospital, Victoria on 17 August 1902 of heart failure and pneumonia. He is buried in Mount Moriac Cemetery , Victoria.

Thomas Read (junior), Samuel Robinson and Jane Botterill were brought before the magistrates at the County Office, on 30 April 1842, charged with committing wilful damage on certain property in Shearsby-lane, belonging to Mr. John Clarke. Just who owned the waste land along the lane was disputed between the defendants, and others who had laid out gardens there, and Mr. Clarke of Peatling Hall. When Mr. Clarke’s men disturbed the gardens and began building a wall the Shearsby residents reacted by pulling it down and throwing the bricks down a nearby well.

The bench (W. Heyrick, J. King and J. Grundy, Esqrs., and the Rev. J.P. Newby) considered that in this case they had no power to adjudicate, being limited by legislation passed in the 24th section of an act passed in the 7th and 8th years of George IV. The defendants had committed the damage under the fair and reasonable supposition that they had as much or more right to the land than Mr. Clarke. A further charge of assault was also dropped against them as it arose from the same incident and it appeared that an unnecessary degree of violence had not been used.

A similar incident had been dealt with a week or two back involving land on the Belgrave lane.

When William Henry Read set off that Saturday morning on his usual round, he must have been hoping for more luck with his horse. He had had several accidents with other horses recently and this one was known to be highly mettled, with a strong dislike for the whip. The route took him as far as Rugby and back through Lutterworth: over fifteen miles each way. He had ten-year old Bertie Clowes along for company.

They had started home from Rugby with a large load at around five o’clock, stopping off at the King’s Arms in Lutterworth and the Dog and Gun at Walton. While they were on the stretch between Walton and Shearsby Read whipped the horse and it sprang forward suddenly. He had been standing on the footboard, leaning on the load and the jolt caused him to fall head first out of the cart.

Bertie Clowes managed to stop the horse and tried to speak to Read, but got no answer. As there was no-one else around he drove the cart himself on to the village to seek for help.

In the mean time a cyclist from Leicester, Thomas Haines, on his way between Walton and Bruntingthorpe, encountered Read lying at the side of the road. He turned the body over but found that him to be dead.

At the inquest held in Bruntingthorpe the following Tuesday, a Mr. R. Steele, surgeon from Peatling Magna, stated his opinion that death was instantaneous, resulting from a dislocation of the spine. The deceased, it was said, had not had too much to drink, the horse had not shied and the load had not slipped. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

In 1891 William Henry Read had been living with his uncle, Thomas W. Read, a fellmonger and his wife Zillah on Back Lane, along with their 1 year old son John, his 80-year old grandmother Hannah and Matilda Palmer, a domestic servant from Walton. Bertie Clowes lived with his father William, a fellmonger’s labourer on the Bank.

Although alcohol was dismissed as a factor in this case, the suspicion that Shearsby carriers made too many stops at inns along their routes was well founded. The previous year another local labourer had been fined for being drunk in charge of his cart and crashing it into another on the road near Great Wigston (Wigston Magna).

Mr. Goulburn: Your Honour, I would like to state the facts of this case. The deceased had been a soldier in the late wars, serving in Royal Wagon Train that made such a name for itself during the battle of Waterloo. At the time of his death he was in receipt of a small pension from the Chelsea Hospital. He had been married to the prisoner for between eight and nine years; but in consequence of mutual disagreements they had lived apart for two years before March last. The deceased, however, hearing that his wife had formed an adulterous connection with one Waterfield, by whom she had a child, insisted on her quitting that man, and again living with hm. To this she complied, but at the same time threatening that she would do for her husband. I am obliged to call the attention of the jury to this fact, because the proof of the crime alleged against the prisoner is wholly of a circumstantial nature. Therefore it is necessary in investigating this crime to take into consideration the whole of her conduct before and after the death of her husband.

Judge: Circumstantial?

Mr Goulburn: Yes, Your Honour. To this end I call my first witness, Thomas Read, the brother of the deceased.

Thomas Read: It was back on the sixth of March this year when my brother took his wife to live with him again. She had been living in Sheepshead with a man named Jonathan Waterfield and had had a child, which she did not blush to confess was his. On her return, though, Hannah behaved badly towards James, to the point were I confronted and remonstrated with her, threatening to have her brought here, Your Honour, for her misbehaviour.

Judge: You did, did you?

Thomas Read: On the Monday following, the twenty-first of April, she again left my brother, but I was able find her and bring her back to him. At twelve o’clock that day she sent for her husband to go with her to Foxton to visit her relative ther. It would be a journey of about seven miles. The last time I saw my brother was as he left Shearsby to go with his wife to that place. By six o’clock the same evening Hannah had returned and called for me. She told me that her husband had run away from her mad. When I asked her what she meant by that she said:

Hannah Read: “When we got below Gumley, Jem began to dance and jump about as if he were mad; then he damned and swore, and fell onto the grass, and tore it up with his hands. After that, he jumped up and ran as hard as he could towards Debdale-wharf. I went to the bridge but could only look after him.”

Thomas Read: “Why did you not alarm the people in the neighbourhood?”

Hannah Read: “I was too much frightened to do so.”

Thomas Read: “Hannah, I fear you have pushed my poor brother into the navigation, and have drowned him there.”

Hannah Read: “Good Lord, Master, we were never within a closes’s breadth of the navigation.”

Thomas Read: I then called upon the new constable in the village to keep her in custody while gathered people together to assist me in searching for my brother. The following morning, as I was engaged in dredging the canal, I pulled up my brother’s corpse from a bridge near Foxton. I said to Hannah, who was there with me at the time, that the body appeared to be bruised.

Hannah Read: “If there are any bruises, he made them himself, for he tumbled down along the towing path as if he were mad.”

Thomas Read: This seemed contrary to what she had told me on the previous evening. She told me afterwards that he had tumbled into the canal, about eighty yards from the bridge, and that she had held his hat out to try to save him.

Mr. Goulburn. Thank you, you may stand down. I now call upon James Alney, the constable at Sheepshead, to tell us what happened when the deceased went there to recover his wife.

James Alney: I went with a man from Shearsby to the house of one Jane Wright. Upon my knocking on the door and asking if Hannah Read and John Waterfield were in the house, Hannah put ther head out of the window and called back inside to Waterfield.

Hannah Read: “O Lord, John, here is Jem come back!”

James Alney: The man from Shearsby insisted on her going back with him.

Hannah Read: “If I do, I won’t live with you; I would sooner murder you.”

James Alney: Then she threw a wooden weaver’s bobbin, as big as my arm, at her husband in the street.

Mr. Goulburn: Mary Gamble.

Mary Gamble: Hannah came to me that Monday, before she and James set off for Foxton, telling me that her husband had insisted on her living with him, but that she was against this and had said:

Hannah Read: “Damn him, I’ll do for him.”

Elizabeth Whitmore: I was there when Mr. Read was endeavouring to persuade his wife to live quietly with him, heard her say:

Hannah Read: “Damn you, I’ll never live with you; I’ll finish you between this and Monday night.”

Ann Robinson: Hannah Read came to my house on the evening when her husband was drowned, and told me that he had run off mad towards Gumley. I told her “You will be guarded until your husband is found, dead or alive. People think you have drowned him; and if you have, you are sure to be hanged.” She said:

Hannah Read: “Nobody saw me drown him; and therefore no one can swear against against me”.

Mr. Goulburn: I call Robert Johnson, boatman.

Robert Johnson: I saw two people on that Monday afternoon near the bridge at Foxton. There was a man wearing a smock-frock, and a woman, who had a child in her arms, wore a red gown. The next day I was helping to drag the canal, and pulled out the body of the dead man. When found, his right hand was still in his breeches pocket. I believe the man we pulled out of the canal was the same as the one I had seen the previous evening.

Mr. Goulburn: Call back witness Read!

Thomas Read: When I saw them leave the village, they were dressed as Johnson described. And the place where Johnson saw them was in the opposite direction to where Hannah said they had been going.

Court Reporter: Another witness proved that that they were dressed in the manner described, and that they were seen near the lock. Then the Coroner Mr. Meredith Esq. was called:

Charles Meredith: I have here an examination of the prisoner..

The Judge: Which I will not hear read. I don’t agree with this practice of taking confessions from people in my gaols and producing them on their trial. Let people speak for themselves, I say. What can you tell about the body you were asked to look at?

Charles Meredith: The deceased met his end by drowning.

Court Reporter: The prisoner, who during the examination of the witnesses she had frequently contradicted their statements and was now called upon for her defence. She roused herself from a sort of stupor into which she had fallen, and in a low voice and wild manner protested that she was wholly innocent of the charge made against her. She described her husband’s conduct to have been frantic, and inexplicable, and that he had left her suddenly and fallen into the river.

The Judge: Members of the Jury, you have heard the testimony of several witness against the prisoner, and yet all the evidence is merely circumstantial. I urge you to consider this evidence with the most scrupulous attention, giving the prisoner the benefit of your doubts, if any should arise, concerning her guilt.

Court Reporter: After deliberating a quarter of an hour, the jury pronounced a verdict of..

Foreman: Guilty.

Court Reporter: The learned judge’s placing the black cap upon his head aroused her again from stupor, but when he addressed her by name she responded by a frantic shriek of melancholy fear and horror. She continually interrupted him by such appeals as:

Hannah Read: Save me! Oh, save me! For God’s sake, do not hang me! Oh save me for the sake of my six children, and my baby of six months old!

The Judge: Execution to take place next Friday morning. Afterwards her body to be taken down and sent to the Infirmary for the benefit of the anatomists.

As William R– set off one the six-mile journey to Lutterworth to be sworn in as Shearsby’s constable on the 21st of April 1825, tragic events were starting to unfold that would long be remembered. His first duty that day had, however, been a straight-forward as any he might have hoped for. He re-paid the previous constable, Richard Messanger, for the costs of his earlier journey to Blaby for a meeting about the militia in the county. Richard had performed the job of constable for the past three years and was, no doubt, relieved to be able to hand it on to someone else. William noted that he handed over four shillings and six pence for the expenses on that trip, the same as he himself was to claim for the Swearing-In journey. He carried with him to Lutterworth the shilling required to pay for the oath that would make him officially Shearsby’s constable.

Already that morning, James Read, one of the villagers, had discovered that his troubled and troublesome wife Hannah had gone missing. No-one in the village could recall when this couple had got on and it was only in the previous month that she had been brought back to Shearsby with a new baby in tow. This latest child had been born in Shepshed while Hannah had been living with Jonathan Waterfield. It was in addition to the three children she had with James Read, and two from previous relationships: Ann Packwood, aged about 14; William Packwood, about 12; Elizabeth Read about 9 and born after James and Hannah married in May 1816; and Uriah Read, born May 1820 and Emmanuel, aged 2. Not long after Emmanuel’s birth, James had got into money troubles over a calf he he purchased, but been unable to pay for. James considered it wise to disappear for a bit, at least until he was able to repay this debt.

In his absence, Hannah was able to wander off and found her way to Shepshed, 14 miles north of Leicester. She stayed with a young couple, Jonathan Waterfield and his wife, taking on some of the domestic chores while Jonathan’s wife was in the latter stages of pregnancy. There had been Waterfields living in Shearsby in 1818, when Thomas and Widdow Waterfield, along with Hannah Packwood, were recorded as receiving support in the Overseer’s accounts. Sadly, complications from the birth meant that both mother and child died soon after. Hannah and Jonathan drew closer together after this loss, to the point where Hannah gave birth to Jonathan’s child.

By this time James Read had been able to resolve his money troubles and tracked his wife down in Shepshed. He went with James Alney, the constable at Shepshed to the house where they were staying. As the constable was knocking on the door, Hannah put her head out of the window and called back to Waterfield, “Oh Lord, John, here is Jem come back”. James insisted on her coming with him, but initially Hannah was against the idea, replying “If I do, I won’t live with you; I would sooner murder you”. James Alney later recalled that this accompanied a weaver’s bobbin, “as big as his arm” sailing out of the window.

Nevertheless she did return with her husband to Shearsby, even if she was not happy about it. On her return her neighbours took her husband’s side: “Hannah”, they said “if you will not consent to live with your husband, and sleep with him tonight, we will douse you in water”. But she replied that she would rather have a naked sword run through her than consent to such proposals. Things remained uneasy between Hannah and James.

Her April escape did not go well. Her brother-in-law, Thomas Read, correctly guessed her direction and was able to bring her back before she could get any distance. At mid-day Hannah sent over one of her children with a message for her husband, promising that if he were to accompany her on a visit to her relatives in Foxton, she would live peacefully with him. James agreed to this plan and the last his brother saw of him was as they left the village: James in a smock-frock, hat and carrying a stick, Hannah in a red gown. Their route would take them past the new reservoir at Saddington and along the Leicestershire and Northampton Canal newly cut through the fields around Foxton.

Hannah was back by six o’clock the same day and sent for her brother-in-law with distressing news. Her husband had left her and run away mad: when we got below Gumley, she said, he had begun to dance and jump about as if he were mad; then he damned and swore, and fell on the grass, tearing it up in his hands. She had last seen him running as hard as he could back along the canal towards Debdale Wharf. All Hannah could do, was go to the bridge and watch him go. She had been too frightened, she said, to have called on any of the people nearby for help.

Thomas feared the worst. He said, “Hannah, I fear you have pushed my poor brother into the navigation, and have drowned him”. But she denied it, crying “Good Lord, Master, we were never within a close’s breadth of the navigation”. Thomas called on the constable, now returned from his swearing in at Lutterworth, and asked him to keep her in custody, while he organised people to help him search for his brother.

The constable called on two villagers: Dyson and Bottrill, to guard Hannah for what turned out to be the next three nights and four days, costing him twelve shillings between them, plus seven shillings and three pence ha’penny for their provisions and another four shillings four pence ha’penny paid to Thomas Weston for their ale.

Another villager, Ann Robinson later recalled a conversation with Hannah that evening, where she had warned her: “You will be guarded till your husband is found, dead or alive. People think you have drowned him; and if you have, you are sure to be hanged”. Hannah replied, “Nobody saw me drown him, and therefore nobody can swear against me”.

Next morning the constable hired a horse and cart from Ann’s husband Joseph to convey Hannah to Foxton (costing another six shillings). It was not long before a body was found in the canal by the bridge near Foxton. Thomas Read remarked that his brother’s body appeared bruised. Hannah now claimed that James had tumbled into the canal while madly running away, and that any bruises had been made by her husband himself. She had tried to save him by holding out his hat, but to no effect. This change to her story was not lost on James’ brother.

The constable made other trips to Foxton asking for anyone who could remember seeing anything. Among those there he found Robert Johnson, a boatman, who remembered seeing a man in a smock-frock and a woman in a red gown with a child in her arms. He had helped drag the canal that morning and found the body of the man he recognised, drowned, with his right hand still in his breeches pocket.